From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The Bureau of Land
Management and the buyers themselves tried to
depict the first sales in a mass disposal of wild
horses mandated by Congress as “rescues,” by
“sanctuaries,” but horse rescue veterans are not
all buying the dog-and-pony show.
The sales are required by a stealth
amendment to the 1971 Wild and Free Ranging
Horse and Burro Protection Act introduced by U.S.
Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana) in November
2004. The Burns amendment orders the BLM to sell
“without limitation” any horse in custody who is
10 years of age or who has been offered for
adoption three times without a taker.
About 8,400 of the 24,000 horses already
in the BLM captive inventory were made
immediately eligible for sale, and many of the
remainder will be eligible by the end of the
year. The BLM is also continuing to capture
horses, with the stated goal of reducing the
U.S. wild horse population from about 37,000 to
circa 28,000.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Stealth riders attached to the “Consolidated
Appropriations Act, 2005″ on November 18, 2004 crippled two of the
oldest U.S. federal animal protection statutes.
The 3,600-page, $388 billion appropriations act, HR 4818,
was ratified in final form and sent to U.S. President George W. Bush
for his signature on December 6.
Buried deep within it, Section 142 in effect repealed the
1971 Wild and Free Ranging Horse and Burro Protection Act, virtually
mandating that wild horses and burros must be sold to slaughter.
Section 143 excised 94 bird species from the 1918 Migratory
Bird Treaty Act.
The HR 4818 riders followed four years after similar tactics
permanently excluded rats, mice, and birds from the definition of
“animals” protected by the 1971 Animal Welfare Act.
The effect of the three repeals is that even before the Bush
administration moves to roll back the “critical habitat” provisions
of the Endangered Species Act, as demanded in late November by the
Western Governors Association, animals have less federal protection
now than in 1974, when the ESA was adopted.

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